We’ll float in space, just you and I
I had reservations about Gravity going in, as it has been compared to (amongst other things) 2001, which for me is a tediously dry art piece rather than an actual film. I needn’t have worried, as Alfonso Cuaron’s film is far more concerned with the fates of actual characters than pretentious esoteric musings on the nature of humanity. No monkey suits, either. It starts off with Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and some other guy – who, if this were Star Trek, would be sporting a really red shirt – on a spacewalk. Sandra is nervy and inexperienced, whilst George is all smooth and Clooneyish. Some technobabble later and sundry space junk is flying at them at alarming speeds. Let the thrills begin. The BBFC now quite often warns viewers, tongue often in cheek, when films contain ‘mild peril’. Gravity boasts sustained sequences of genuine jeopardy, of the type that’s conspicuously absent in, say, Superman and General Zod smashing up an entire city of...